Antoine Sauve Stuns Canadian Trials with B Final National Record
If you were looking for Antoine Sauve Thursday night among the champions at Bell Canadian Trials, you would not have found him in any of the usual spots.
He was not in the A final of the men’s 200 freestyle at Saanich Commonwealth Place. He was not on the medal stand. He was not interviewed post-race on CBC.
But he is on the Canadian record board, in a spot that Brent Hayden had held for nearly as long as Sauve has been alive.
In one of the weirdest sequences you will ever see at a swim meet, Sauve broke the Canadian record and hit the automatic qualification standard for the World Championships at 1:46.39 from the B final of the men’s 200 free Thursday night.
Photo Courtesy: Swimming Canada/Scott Grant
That doesn’t win the event – officially – with Ethan Ekk going 1:48.53 from the locked A final. It might require some logistical finesse from Swimming Canada to get him to swim the individual event at the World Championships in Singapore. (The team announcement Thursday night did not include events, and Sauve was already going to Worlds on the 400 free relay for finishing second in the 100 free.) And it went without the pomp and circumstance usually afforded to a winner.
Sauve said his primary goal in the race was to make a run at Hayden’s record, which he showed could be done equally as well in finals A or B.
“Coming into the meet, it was my only goal,” he said of the record. “After the 100 two days ago, I had a big confidence boost. Missing the A final this morning was kind of sad, but I think it just got me excited for tonight and made me believe that I can achieve it.”
The timeline is wild. At 5:45 p.m. local time, Canadian Trials ran the A final of the men’s 200 free, the second event of the sixth night (and first Summer McIntosh-free session, as we are contractually obligated to mention) of competition. Ekk won in 1:48.53, with seven finishers clustered within .75 seconds. Then came the junior final, won by Francis Brennan in 1:51.25.
While the A finalists were waiting in the wings to collect their medals, up came Sauve, leading a B final that at Canadian Trials has been the catch-all for senior-level stragglers and international swimmers. And the University of Michigan commit from Quebec proceeded to blast the heck out of the field. He won the B final by nearly 5.5 seconds. His 1:46.39 obliterated the previous-best of 1:48.21, as well as the prelims time of 1:50.59.
Sauve downed Hayden’s hallowed record by .01 seconds. His mark of 1:46.40 dated to the Beijing Olympics, was one of five remaining supersuited individual records on the men’s side. It got a congrats from Hayden on Instagram, who posted that he was happy to see his record “finally broken after 17 years!” It was achieved by someone who’ll turn 20 in September.
The finals oddity was borne of a bizarre prelims. Laon Kim led the way in 1:49.60 for first place in the morning. Lorne Wigginton was eighth in 1:50.29. In ninth was Sauve. That’s eight swimmers separated by .69 seconds, then Sauve another three tenths back for nine in .99.
“I just went too easy, honestly,” Sauve said. “I thought it was going to be easier than that, but the guys went faster than that. … Things happen, but it’s a lesson learned. It’s not going to happen again.”
In the final behind Ekk, who fielded questions for the CBC broadcast while Sauve was still in the ready room, was a tie for second place. Jordi Vilchez booked his first Worlds spot by going 1:48.83, the same time as Filip Senc-Samardzic. The latter is on the 400 free relay with Sauve.
Wigginton was fourth in 1:49.01, though he could get bumped from the relay for Sauve, and the two-plus-second difference almost demands it.
That’s a bit of redemption for Sauve. As pointed out by Brittany MacLean Campbell, providing excellent color commentary for CBC Sports this week, Sauve was the one bested by Jeremy Bagshaw by .04 seconds for the final spot on the 800 free relay at Olympic Trials for Bagshaw’s Olympic dream to come true.
